Untitled
by roguedoll
Summary: How far are friends willing to go to help each other, centers around Lady Jaye, FLint, and Snake-eyes. Fills in the gap of the past seven years
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer: Others own these characters not I  
  
  
  
The more she thought about it the more it didn't make sense. Her anger had built up that she didn't see through his answers. She took them for what they were, selfishness. But when had he ever been selfish? He wouldn't have his scars if he was selfish. So intent in her thoughts, she about ran into Lady Jaye and Flint in a training room. Though she could see Jaye's face, Jaye had no idea she had walked in on them.  
  
She watched the interaction between the two. That was another thing she couldn't place. After the Joe team had been shut down Jaye had been sent on a mission, promising to call when she got back. Oh she had called alright, two months after Snake-eye had left her. Scarlet had felt so betrayed that Jaye had gone that long. Even though Scarlet no longer considered Jaye her friend, she had to admit that Jaye hadn't been her self. Gone was her outgoing and sassy personality, instead she was now quiet and withdrawn. So much so, that many Joes had commented on it. It almost seemed as if she was a different person. Feeling she was intruding she tuned to leave, but, ther conversation caught her off guard.  
  
"Have I told you how much I love you?" Flint asked her.  
  
Her eyes lit up and a smile crossed her lips. "Not today."  
  
"There's the smile I like to see." Flint said kissing her on the nose.  
  
"Sorry, I guess I haven't been myself lately." She said shaking her head. "Trying to get a grasp on things. I know it's hard on you, I'm probably keeping you up at nights." Her eyes clouded with worry.  
  
"It's fine really. Baby steps remember?"  
  
Scarlet watched as Jaye rolled her eyes. An expression that she had knows the old Jaye would give Flint on numerous occasions. "If I take an smaller steps I wouldn't be going anywhere.: I just want to be me again, but I don't even know who that is anymore."  
  
"She's there If you could have seen you face earlier, You would have sworn it was eight years ago and Scarlett and Snakes were coming out of that carrier."  
  
"Well, you still have that particular talent."  
  
"Which one?"  
  
"Your ability to but you foot in your mouth in under sixty seconds."  
  
"I thought is was in forty seconds?"  
  
"You're learning."  
  
"Flint to the command center." Came over the intercom.  
  
"I have to get to work. Be careful?"  
  
"Always."  
  
With that Flint left the room and Jaye turned to the weight stand. With that she exposed her back to Scarlet. Crisscross scars cover her back. Most likely from a whip. On her shoulder it looked like someone had taking a sander and removed the flesh. She couldn't help but gasp. Lady Jaye didn't turn around but finished up her set with the hand weights. Then she spoke, almost as if something in her had finally broken free. "Ugly isn't it, Shana? The long scars are eighty lashes from the Baroness, from what I cant remember, probably for the hell of it. This one four in the morning, three months after I had been rescued, sander to cover the Cobra symbol they branded on me." With that she gathered her stuff, turning to Scarlett she looked her in the eyes. "In case you wondering I was captured three weeks after GI Joe was shut down I was rescued on May 5th 1996. " With that she left.  
  
Scarlett was left reeling. May 5th was three weeks before her wedding. May 5th was the day she had come home and received the letter. It was beginning to come together, though she didn't know even half off the story it was begging to make sense. She just wanted to get to the bottom of things. 


	2. 

She burst out into the parking lot. The Images that raced through her head made her sick. The Baronesses face full of hatred as she swung her whip down. The Crimson Guards holding her down as they branded her. The dungeon, with the rats crawling over her food. Her clawing her way out of the snake-infested box they had placed her in for two weeks. Then the numbness, the hollowness when it came to the fact, they had broken her.  
  
As she escaped the confides of the building. She began to take deep gulps of the cleansing air. The worse was this damn claustrophobia, the panic attacks that welled up with it. The way they stole her breathe. She felt her Joe comm. trying to regulate her adrenaline, giving her vitamins. She wanted to yank it off She felt a hand touch her shoulder, it startled her so much that she jumped causing the had to slip and touch the scar caused by the sander.  
  
Jaye stiffened the minute Scarlet touched the ugly scar on her shoulder. Jaye turned to look at Scarlet. Scarlet was shocked at the wildness in Jaye's eyes. Jaye took a deep breath shaking her head. Scarlet noticed that Jaye was trying to get control of what ever was haunting her. Scarlet was concerned for her friend. "Jaye talk to me."  
  
"I wouldn't no where to start."  
  
Lady Jaye let Scarlet lead her to some stone tables. Taking a seat Scarlett looked her in the eye. "The beginning is always a good place and don't start out with that I was born In Martha's Vineyard crap you always threw me to get me off your case."  
  
Jaye smiled weakly. Taking a deep breath she started….  
  
"It all started out the day the pit closed. When those of us elected to stay military got new orders. Mine were to go to England become a member of Action Force. I didn't even make it to the Action Force Base of operations in London. Cobra got me the minute I got off the plane in England….. 


	3. 

"We touched down in England. The pilot announced that it was perfect English weather, overcast and misty." Jaye looked at a (bunch of?) nearby dandelions growing in a crack of the asphalt. "As I gathered my bag, a man approached, smiling at me. He paused to give me the once-over. The guy wasn't that bad to look at, so I smiled back at him, and he started walking again.  
  
"'Alison Hart-Burnett?' I looked into his eyes and recognized him immediately: underneath that facemask, it was Zartan. He grabbed my shoulder, but I was ready and I had him on his back in no time flat. Buzzer and Blowtorch came running towards us. I thought I could handle them. Moving quickly, I drew them away from the crowd. There were to many variables to contend with in the crowded airport.  
  
'Look what I found,' Zartan said as he approached the standoff, "a bonus." He removed the mask. "Lady Jaye, I'd like you to meet Maggie, Ambassador Roberts' daughter.'  
  
"She stood there terrified, pleading for me to help her. Zartan had reached a new low— Maggie wasn't more than 14. Fourteen. I had to think of a way to help her. But my mind went blank.  
  
"'Now, I really don't care why COBRA wants her,' he grinned wickedly. 'Just being paid to deliver her. Dead or alive. You, on the other hand, do care, don't you? So be a good little Joe and cooperate.'  
  
I had no choice in the matter: go along with them, or… She was only 14. I was lost, what do I do, let them get some teenage girl or take me. I made the only choice that I could make. I stood down. Cobra troops swarmed me. But not before I saw Buzzer taking aim and blowing the girl's brains out.  
  
"'Dead or alive, and a bonus. My lucky day.' Zartan laughed as her small form fell to the concrete."  
  
"I woke up in a small cell; there was a cot in one corner and a pot for personal functions. I tried to clear my head but all I saw was that girl being shot in the head. I kept wondering what the parents were doing; if they hated me. For all intents and purposes, I killed their child. Though I didn't pull the trigger, it was my decision to not kill Zartan right away that caused this.  
  
"The door opened. Five Crimson Guards walked in, single file, and I moved to rush my attackers. But they were ready for me. They had me on the floor in seconds, one holding my arms and one my legs. The others had guns pointed at me. The Baroness looked at me as they held me down. I watched her as she came closer to me.  
  
"'What do you want with me?'  
  
" I'm here to offer you a position with Cobra. G.I. Joe is gone; join us and you'll be on the winning team.'  
  
"Looking up at her, I spit in her face. 'Not in a million years, bitch.' At that, she pulled her leg back, sending a solid kick to my midsection, knocking the air out of me.  
  
"Looking at the guard with the gun, she winked. 'She's all yours, boys,' and stepped back into the shadows. The guards swarmed on me like wasps, pulling off my clothing and tearing into my flesh with fists and gun butts. After the third blow I thankfully lost consciousness."  
  
"After a couple of weeks, I think - I lost track of the time spent in the cell - they moved me to the dungeon. The dungeon was a one-room floor that was 'kill or be killed'. I learned that too quickly. I had been there for about two days, and being the one of the few women, I knew all too well what was on a couple of men's minds. But I was damned determined not to let that happen again.  
  
"The leader - I think his name was Viktor - was this big Russian guy. I figured the minute I saw him he was a plant. I mean, this guy looked like he would fit right in with COBRA. I had something he wanted and he didn't care how he got it. I just looked at him and started laughing; I guess it was the absurdity of the situation.  
  
"'Sorry, hate to disappoint you, but you're not my type,' I told him. He gripped me by the arm and swung me around to face him.  
  
"'You don't understand. The only choice you have is if you like it or not.' He dug his fingers into my arms deeper.  
  
"'I told you no!' I shouted, lashing out with all of the frustration from the guards and what they had done, onto him. I don't remember doing it, I just remember the end result: me holding his vocal chord in my hand, his blood running down my arm. The others slowly backed off, still watching me. It was that from point that I knew that I had to be on guard at all times."  
  
"Xamot and Tomax paid me a visit 90 marks, days later," Jaye shook her head, "sorry, three months. I had started to keep track of time by marking my area of the wall. If you looked just right you could see the sun rise and set every day through a crack in the moist walls. Since the first time, I killed four more men for thinking they could rape me, slicing their throats with a piece of broken wall that I had sharpened to a point. Desperate times called for desperate measures. I had become a wild animal and everything there fed that. If I wanted to eat, it was kill the rats or whoever got in my way. My food was stale bread with maggots for protein." She paused to catch her breath.  
  
"The dungeon's door swung open, and everyone scattered from bright light. Two figures stepped in and the door was shut again. No one moved: when COBRA came a-calling it wasn't good. I hoped they weren't here for me, to punish me for killing 5 of their men. Still I grabbed my wall shard, just in case the voices came towards me. It was kept dark, so that the prisoners were easy to disorient."  
  
"'Lady Jaye, we are here to offer you…' Tomax started.  
  
"'A position with COBRA,' Xamot finished his brother's sentence.  
  
"'Fuck off,' I told them.  
  
"'You don't have a choice…' Tomax said, and pried my fingers from the makeshift knife in my hand. He dropped it and I cried out as it shattered. I was defenseless and they knew it.  
  
"I stood there between them, trying to think of something, as a group of guards came in carrying a stone fire pit that glowed red. Two others carried a stone block, and I wondered what they were going to do to me. A man larger than Roadblock ducked to enter the room. In his hand was a branding iron. It was shaped in the head of a cobra.  
  
"I ran. The guards grabbed me, ripped my shirt off and pushed me over the stone. I could smell my burning flesh. I felt the pain of the branding iron searing my flesh. When he was done, one of the guards knocked me out."  
  
"They had moved me again, I noticed when up. I realized I wasn't alone.  
  
"'Wonderin' if you'd wake up.' I looked into the darkness, made out the shape of a man sitting on the bed across me.  
  
"'Wish I hadn't.'  
  
"'Hey, now I'm not that bad for company,' he said. He came closer, and I noticed he was young, about twenty-five. His accent was definitely slow, Southern, and his smile was like Flint's. It made me sick with missing him – three months' pain in the space of a breath. That when things really started going downhill: the fact that I hadn't even thought of him. I had just thought of surviving.  
  
"'Did I say something wrong?' he asked.  
  
"'No. Just thinking of someone; you remind me of him.'  
  
"'Sweetheart?' he asked me.  
  
"'You could say that.'  
  
"'What are you doing here? I mean, most of us here are military; we got caught trying to get information for the raid the military is planning to make.'  
  
"'Military?'  
  
"'Yep. Special Forces. "Mess with the best, die like the rest,"' he said proudly and without a trace of irony for his predicament..  
  
"'What is it with men and the Special Forces? Military too. Old vendetta, though.' I didn't feel comfortable telling him who I was: I thought they might expect me to do something risky.  
  
"'Vendetta?' He looked at me strangely, but I guess my expression told him to drop the subject.  
  
"I spent six months in that cell with him. I found out his name was Sgt. Matt Millhouse. He was a Tennessee Son, born and raised in Ducktown, TN, just twenty miles outside of Johnson City. His family raised the state's best quarter horses. He was married to a little thing that was waiting for him back home. He liked his steaks bloody, and could sing any Garth Brooks song backwards. He could, too – he showed me. In general, he was a really nice guy. I felt that he had no place here, in this hellhole.  
  
"Though the barracks were a lot nicer then the dungeon, there was still cruelty here and I got a taste of that too."  
  
"Matt and I were sitting on the floor playing a game of rock dice— now, mind you, it's not the most fun game in the world, and it's real easy to cheat at, but, hey, it passed the time. In burst Cobra guards, forcing us to lay face first on the floor, hands above our heads. They grabbed me and drug me out of the cell, scraping my knees across the stone floor.  
  
"Finally, they threw me on the ground at Baronesses' feet.  
  
"'Lick my boots,' she commanded in that haughty grating voice of hers.  
  
"'Uhh— no.' The guards were on me in no time, pulling my hair, making me go down on my already-bloody knees. Baroness walked up to me, slapping me hard enough that it sent me to the ground.  
  
"'It's time for the game to begin, Joe." With that, she started whipping me with a cat-o-nine tails. Somewhere between fifty or sixty lashes I passed out from the pain."  
  
"I was awake- or was I? There was no light, just darkness. I couldn't move. I was in a box with just enough room to hold me. I could feel it closing in around me. I could barely breathe. I could feel the heat of my breath on the lid- it was so close. I lay there, trying not to panic. My back felt like it was on fire. I was convincing myself that this wasn't really so bad- until I felt them move. The crawling sensation of the snakes on my skin- across my legs, my stomach. For a while one slept on my face. The box was so tiny that I couldn't move. I just lay there. That was all I could do.  
  
"That's when the thought came to me. The little girl that I had watched them kill. The people I had killed in the dungeon. Their faces- the shock when it registered that I held their life in my hands. The last one was cold-blooded murder. I never gave him a chance to act. I just snapped his neck because of what I thought he was going to do. I thought of the sergeant in my cell and how much he reminded me of Flint. That's when I lost it- that's when my mind collapsed. Because of Flint. I was his conscience, I was the one who yelled when he did something that wasn't 'ethical,' and here I was killing people with my bare hands; I had destroyed a little girl's life. Xamot and Tomax were right- I wasn't much better than a Cobra agent.  
  
"After a while, lying there with the snakes, something began to change. I felt this need rear up inside of me: I needed out. I was trapped- buried. I tried to claw my way out of the coffin- I was panic-stricken. What could I do? I started screaming- kicking and screaming, until I was hoarse. That's when the snakes started biting me. I— my voice was gone. I had nearly torn my fingertips to the bone, clawing at the rough wood. Mercifully, I finally passed out."  
  
"Salvation came May 5th, 1996. At the time, I really didn't see it as salvation- I was so out of it. I just know what I remember. Not a lot, really. My usual guard had come asking for favors. I learned long ago to just do what they asked. Otherwise they would punish you- burn you with cigarettes, break a bone. It didn't faze me any more- the pain had stopped. I just did what they asked so they would leave me alone. Then I'd go back to my own private hell until the next one came along.  
  
"'Get on your knees,' he commanded  
  
"I did what he asked, but in the background I heard a commotion. It sounded like World War Three had broken out on the perimeter.. As the guard forced me to my knees, they stormed in. I felt his blood splatter across my face as he fell.  
  
"'Sergeant. We found one.," a young man said, slowly approaching me.  
  
"Two men walked in, I didn't recognize the one with the mask, but I knew the other one.  
  
"'Snakes?'  
  
"He walked up to me. You could tell that the men didn't want him to get too close. He knelt next to me. Though he had his visor on, I could still see his eyes— he was that close. I remembered Stalker saying something once about, that if you got close enough to see Snake's Eyes you were dead.  
  
"'Am I dead?' I asked him.  
  
"Snakes signed, 'You're fine now. We're taking you home.' He was smiling under his mask.  
  
"All of a sudden, a Viper burst into the room. 'Okay, men, 57 prisoners are accounted for….' He stopped, and slowly removing his helmet, looked at me. At first, all I saw was the uniform and clung to Snake Eyes. I just looked at him. How could this be happening to me, I must be dying— first I was seeing Snake Eyes, and now a Cobra Viper was coming to finish the job.  
  
"I broke away from Snake Eyes. Where I got the strength from, I don't know. Looking back on it I'm surprised I got past Snake Eyes— I think I shocked him. I headed straight for the Viper, prepared to tear his throat out with my teeth if need be. Anything to reclaim a small part of me, or better yet, escape… from this hell.  
  
"'Allie? It's Dash, honey. Don't you recognize me?'  
  
"I stopped frozen. Part of me had forgotten even his name, and the other part of me memorized everything about him. His smile. His eyes. Even how he wore that damned beret. I wanted to run into his arms. But then cold reality hit me: I was used. He was the righteous. I had the betrayed the man I loved— let this place almost take over my soul. I backed away, 'No stay away, I'm dirty. Get away. Just stay away.'  
  
"I started screaming that at the top of my lungs. How dirty I was, how evil I was. The simple fact was I was not worthy of him. I was no longer the woman he had fallen in love with, the woman he asked to marry a year ago.  
  
"He looked at me with pain in his eyes, 'I never stopped looking for you, asking about you. How could you say such things?' he asked. 'Of course you're the same person. Of course I love you.'  
  
"'Don't you see I'm not? They used me, Flint. That's the cold reality of it. I was a Cobra's whore. I couldn't stop them; I didn't know how to stop them. I couldn't be strong. All I could think about was my own worthless life and saving that.' I was shocked; I didn't want to own up to the fact that maybe there was some redeeming quality about this all— that I was still human. 'I'm an animal, Flint, nothing else.'  
  
"'No, you're not. You are my Allie.'  
  
"'Flint, Alison Hart-Burnett, code named Lady Jaye, is dead and buried. Her grave is somewhere between the furnace room and a snake-filled box. All I am is prisoner J-784.'"  
  
  
  
Scarlett watched as Lady Jaye wiped a few stray tears from her eyes; she could see the pain in her friend's eyes. "Allie…" But the JoeComm around her wrist went off  
  
"Lady Jaye, we need you in housing."  
  
Jaye stood up. "I have to go." She turned and saw Flint. Anger encased her body like a suit of armor. "Like what you heard?" she spat at him.  
  
"Jaye...I'm so sorry," Flint said softly.  
  
"For what, Flint, sorry for what? Not being there?"  
  
He was speechless.  
  
"So, tell me, did the Packers win?" she added dryly, grabbing her gear and heading to the parking lot..  
  
Flint sat down next to Scarlett. "I was going to say something, but..."  
  
"…couldn't?" she finished. In the background was the sound of a car peeling out. "One thing hasn't changed."  
  
"Oh?" He glanced toward the sound.  
  
She gave him a weak smile. "Sure. You still can piss off Lady Jaye."  
  
He managed a strangled laugh. "So I can, Scarlett. So I can." 


End file.
